Shell command: xxd

Command line options

xxd [options] [infile [outfile]]
xxd -r[evert] [options] [infile [outfile]]
xxd -h[elp]

A command line option has a short form (first column) and sometimes a long alternative (second column).

If the option takes an argument, its listed in the third column.

`-a`	`-autoskip`		Toggle autoskip: A single `*` replaces nul-lines. Default off.
`-b`	`-bits`		Switch to bits (binary digits) dump, rather than hexdump. This option writes octets as eight digits 1s and 0s instead of a normal hexadecimal dump. Each line is preceded by a line number in hexadecimal and followed by an ASCII (or ebcdic) representation. The command line switches `-r`, `-p`, `-i` do not work with this mode.
`-c`	`-cols`	`cols`	format `<cols>` octets per line. Default 16 (-i: 12, -ps: 30, -b: 6). Max 256.
`-E`	`-EBCDIC`		Change the character encoding in the righthand column from ASCII to EBCDIC. This does not change the hexadecimal representation. The option is meaningless in combinations with `-r`, `-p` or `-i`.
`-e`			Switch to little-endian hexdump. This option treats byte groups as words in little-endian byte order. The default grouping of 4 bytes may be changed using `-g`. This option only applies to hexdump, leaving the ASCII (or EBCDIC) representation unchanged. The command line switches -r, -p, -i do not work with this mode.
`-g`	`-groupsize`	`<bytes>`	Separate the output of every `<bytes>` bytes (two hex characters or eight bit-digits each) by a whitespace. Specify `-g 0` to suppress grouping. `<bytes>` defaults to 2 in normal mode, 4 in little-endian mode and 1 in bits mode. Grouping does not apply to PostScript or include style.
`-h`	`-help`		Print a summary of available commands and exit. No hex dumping is performed.
`-i`	`-include`		Output in C include file style. A complete static array definition is written (named after the input file), unless `xxd` reads from stdin.
`-l`	`-len`	`len`	Stop after writing `<len>` octets.
`-o`		`offset`	Add `<offset>` to the displayed file position.
`-p`	`-postscript`		`Output` in PostScript continuous hexdump style. Also known as plain hexdump style. Alternative switches are also `-ps` and `-plain`.
`-r`	`-revert`		Reverse operation: convert (or patch) hexdump into binary. If not writing to stdout, `xxd` writes into its output file without truncating it. Use the combination `-r -p` to read plain hexadecimal dumps without line number information and without a particular column layout. Additional Whitespace and line-breaks are allowed anywhere.
`-seek`		`offset`	When used after `-r`: revert with `<offset>` added to file positions found in hexdump.
`-s`		`[+][-]seek`	Start at `<seek>` bytes abs. (or rel.) infile offset. `+` indicates that the seek is relative to the current stdin file position (meaningless when not reading from stdin). `-` indicates that the seek should be that many characters from the end of the input (or if combined with `+`: before the current stdin file position). Without `-s` option, `xxd` starts at the current file position.
`-u`			Use upper case hex letters. Default is lower case.
`-v`	`-version`		Show version string.

Plain dump

The option -p creates a plain dump:

$ printf abc@DEF | xxd -p
61626340444546

Create a file from a hex stream

-r reverses the operation.

$ printf 616263404445460a | xxd -r - out-file
$ cat out-file
abc@DEF

-i

$ dd if=/dev/random bs=20 count=1 2>/dev/null | xxd  -i
  0xf8, 0x91, 0x72, 0x49, 0x7e, 0xec, 0xc4, 0x04, 0xae, 0x42, 0xd0, 0x16,
  0x57, 0x72, 0x2e, 0x9f, 0xa9, 0xea, 0x1c, 0xc9

Shell command: xxd

Command line options

Plain dump

Create a file from a hex stream

-i

See also